Once you have added video to your live blog, users will see it at the top right of the application, but they can also pop it out and resize it. This is quite similar to how CoverItLive already handles YouTube videos, though the option to see videos in their own windows is new. One major advantage for bloggers here is that they can handle text and video all in one application.

CoverItLive provides writers with what they call a 'Writer Console,' which is quite different from what end-users see (see screenshot). The console is the main hub of the application and allows you to add polls, images, audio files, and now, live video. It also displays reader comments on the right side of the application.

One major advantage of CoverItLive is that it allows various writers and editors to work collaboratively, so that one person can handle the writing, another the video, and yet another blogger can focus on interacting with the audience.

Adding live video turns live blogging into a more interesting and immediate experience. Thanks to the proliferation of Qik on mobile phones, we will surely see more events being covered this way. We already liked CoverItLive a lot when we first reviewed it, though it did experience some outages when a lot of people used it during the January Macworld keynote. Since then, though, the platform has become a lot more stable.

The service combines many of the best practices developed by early explorers of the medium, tiny startups that must be very worried tonight. Part BlogTV, part Mogulus and just plain better than UStream - below is a live player and some key points of differentiation. For an in depth discussion of why live video is going to be huge, see this post I wrote last year and the discussion in comments.

Coolness

As many as five participants can do video and audio on one page together.

Chat gives users choice over fonts and colors.

Yahoo! magically grabs usernames in some circumstances but not all. Cookies, bits of cookies.

An API is already offered. That's great.

It's Yahoo! so it should be able to scale...oh nevermind.

Update from Richard: the service was going fine until more than 5 people showed up. I didn't grab a screenshot while it was in working mode, but for a brief time Marshall was live blogging RWW on Yahoo Live:

As you use CoveritLive's software, your commentary streams live to your web page or blog. Readers viewing the commentary can ask questions and participate in polls you create, giving them a reason to stay online on your website for the duration of the event, instead of checking in every now and then. Readers viewing the live blog stream don't have to create user accounts to participate or download any software.

The CoveritLive Console

CoveritLive also provides a way for multiple editors to work together in real-time. One writer could be focused on uploading content and writing while the other answers questions and responds to comments.

How it Works

When you use the CoveritLive service, a resizable AJAX Viewer Window of your live blog is embedded into your website or blog, similar to the way you would embed a widget. However, the CoveritLive team is quick to point out that the service is really "anything but a widget or lightweight tool." Don't be fooled by its ease of use, they say: CoveritLive is a scalable application designed for anyone to use whether they have just a handful of reader or hundreds of thousands.

CoveritLive on a blog

The one-click publishing feature lets you use Google image or video search and then, with one click, post the image or video to the live blog window. There is also an online Media Library and Showprep tool where you can load up your media in preparation for the event. This lets you build up a collection of items beforehand so they are ready when you need them during the live event. 

The one-click Quick Polls can be created on the fly or in advance and stored in the Media Library. You can create as many polls as you would like and can turn the different polls on and off in the "Now Playing" section of the app.

Readers can comment on the live blog, but it's not like a chat window or forum. The comments, or "Audience Messages," as they're called, stream into a window in the Console that only the author can see. By clicking the comment, the author can post the question or comment directly into the live blog for everyone to see and then respond to it. The Audience Messages feature can be turned on or off as desired during the event.

At the event's end, the Viewer Windows becomes what they call an "Instant Replay." This new window has the entire live blog for site visitors to read if they missed viewing it live. The latecomers can still view the poll results, which are automatically linked to by the app when the event is over. The live blog you created is stored on CoveritLive's servers where you can access it at any time or delete it if you decide you no longer need it.

Why Do We Need Liveblogging Tools?

Today's standard publishing and blogging platforms are not really created for live blogging. You have to write, save, and publish and then refresh your blog's page to make sure that it looks right. If you don't know how to set your blog's page to automatically refresh, your site visitors have to automatically refresh the page on their own to see the new content. Even if your page is automatically refreshing, it is still not the equivalent of real-time blogging as your posts are not being displayed as you write them. With CoveritLive, you can instantly blog the event without having to worry with those sort of technical details.

As web-based reporting relies more and more on live coverage of major events, it will be critical for CoveritLive to make sure that outages like this past one never occur or no one will bother to use the service again. Many may have already decided that one crash is one too many and have already sworn it off.

Still, if they get the kinks worked out to deliver a more stable platform, a liveblogging service with the feature set and ease-of-use of CoveritLive is worth keeping an eye on.

The NCAA responded two weeks ago by releasing a new policy for live blogging of collegiate sporting events (PDF).

TechDirt's Mike Masnick points out that the NCAA's rules apply only to credentialed reporters -- and the NCAA can't do anything about publications who just buy their reporters a ticket (except maybe make it harder to stay connected and blog at the venue level). Worse, concludes Masnick, is that the NCAA policy is really hurting fans.

"What's really idiotic, though, is that this makes no sense. Limiting live blogging only hurts the sport. The people who follow live blogs are the really passionate fans -- the ones who love the game the most. They follow the live blogs not as a substitute for watching the game on TV or attending in person -- but because they cannot view the games that way and/or they want to feel the camaraderie of discussing the event with other passionate fans. Cutting off the ability of a reporter to feed info to these fans simply makes no sense. It's hurting your most passionate fans for no good reason whatsoever." -- Mike Masnick, TechDirt

The NCAA policy is also vague, specifying the number of "blogs" that a credentialed reporter can make during a given competition. It doesn't define what a blog is, however. Does that mean single posts, or updates to posts? This Daily Eastern News blog post from November chronicles live the first quarter of a Southern Illinois University football game. It was sanctioned by the NCAA and I count 12 updates in the single first quarter post. Would that now violate the new NCAA policy? In a quarter of football, where they could easily be 60 or 70 plays, is 3 posts enough to keep readers interested?

Guardian writer Jemina Kiss notes today that the NCAA isn't the only one getting rough with live bloggers. The International Cricket Council is considering banning sites provide live blog coverage of cricket matches without paying for coverage rights.

To me this feels a lot like the RIAA's war against music downloading. A stodgy old regulation authority is confronted with a new technology, and because it can't figure out how to control it or make money from it, it tries desperately to limit its use.

What the NCAA doesn't seem to realize is how helpful live bloggers are at promoting collegiate athletics to their most passionate fans. As Mike Masnick astutely observed, the people who conduct and read live blogs are generally the people who are most obsessed with a particular team or sport (who else could stand to watch an entire sporting event unfold in a painfully delayed stream of text updates?). Rather than limit these people, the NCAA and ICC and other organizations should work to make it easier for them to live blog -- especially since they are promoting the league product free of charge.

Further, like the proliferation of music downloading, there will be no stopping the spread of live news coverage. The NCAA and ICC may be able to stop credentialed reporters from live blogging events, but they can never stop ordinary fans from Twittering game results as they happen (something I am sure we will see people doing more of in 2008). Jemina Kiss predicts, "real-time text coverage is a relatively new format so no doubt it will be a decade before the rights framework catches up." In that decade, how much unnecessary pain will bloggers have to endure because of institutions that just don't get it?